The public program “Living Archives” unfolds The Hague-based Marianna Maruyama's long-term research around termite colonies. For this event, she is honoured to invite the Italian accredited conservator Giovanni Pagani, who will give a book conservation workshop. 

Pagani will introduce the basic principles of conservation and preservation from an ethical standpoint, while exploring some of ‘losing battles’ of book conservation. Pagani is the founder of Recanati e Restauro, a not-profit social enterprise aiming to enhance and promote cultural heritage. He will discuss the materiality of the book, its organic properties and the ways in which it is modified by time – processes of death, in other words. The workshop will invite the audience to make an informed approach to dealing with an ancient book in need of restoration, based on an actual case study. 

Over the past two years Maruyama has been moving – physically and imaginatively – between The Hague and Rome in search of what she calls  ‘termitic space’. Termites offer limitless ways of thinking about more-than-human intelligence by provoking questions about social life and the concept of the individual, blurring boundaries between the animate and inanimate, and mixing temporalities. For Maruyama, termites offer different ways of thinking about loss, and prompt a deeper understanding of the life and death cycle of a publication.

This is a free event. No reservation is required.